Blood Sins Read online

  BLOOD

  SINS

  Kay Hooper

  B A N T A M B O O K S

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Bantam Books by Kay Hooper

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Boston

  October

  SENATOR ABE LEMOTT turned from the window and looked at the man in his visitor’s chair. “So that’s it?”

  Bishop said, “The monster who killed your daughter will spend the remainder of his pathetic life screaming at the walls. Whatever was left of his mind got broken there at the end. Or maybe a long time before the end.”

  “And the monster who pulled his strings? The cold, calculating mind behind him?”

  “We never saw him,” Bishop answered. “Even though we believe he was close enough to watch. Close enough to affect some of us. Close enough to hunt and capture the . . . prey . . . for his pet killer.”

  LeMott’s mouth twisted. “Like feeding a spider.”

  “Yes.”

  “So who spun the web?”

  “So far we haven’t found so much as a trace of evidence that he even exists. Except, of course, that we know he does.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “I believe I know where to start looking for him.”

  Senator LeMott smiled. “That’s good, Bishop. That’s very good indeed.”

  One

  North Carolina

  January

  SARAH KEPT to what little shadows the winter-bare trees provided as she worked her way through the forest that separated the Compound from the road. The full moon made this night an uneasy one for stealth, but she hadn’t been given much choice in the matter. Waiting even another day was potentially far more dangerous than acting, so—

  She sensed more than heard a sound and froze, her arms tightening around the sleeping child.

  “It’s just me.” Bailey appeared to step literally out of the darkness not ten feet away.

  “Are you early or am I late?” Sarah kept her voice as low as the other woman’s had been.

  “Six of one.” Bailey shrugged and crossed the space between them. “Is she out?”

  Nodding, Sarah relinquished the little girl, who was warmly dressed to protect her against the January chill. “She should sleep another couple of hours at least. Long enough.”

  “And you’re sure about her? Because we can’t keep doing this. It wasn’t part of the plan, and it’s too dangerous. Sooner or later, he’s going to figure it out.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to prevent. Or at least delay.”

  “It’s not your job, Sarah. Not the reason you’re here.”

  “Isn’t it? He’s getting better at choosing latents. Better at finding them and convincing them to join him. Better than we’ve been.” Sarah was aware of a niggling unease that was growing rather than diminishing. “Speaking of, are we covered?”

  “Of course. My shield’s enclosing all three of us.”

  “What about more-conventional protection?”

  “Galen’s got my back. As usual. But once we leave, you’re on your own again.”

  “I’m not worried about me.”

  “Sarah—”

  “She could be the one, Bailey.”

  “She’s six years old.”

  “All the more reason. Without the defenses we can teach her, she’s vulnerable as hell, especially to someone bent on using her as a weapon.”

  Bailey shifted the slight weight of the child and sighed. “Look, are you sure you haven’t been . . . influenced . . . by what this guy is preaching? All that prophecy stuff?”

  “We believe in prophecy stuff,” Sarah reminded her.

  “Not the kind he preaches.”

  Sarah shook her head. “Don’t worry, I’m not a convert. It’s all I can do to keep up the facade of a loyal member of the flock.”

  “Many more defections and kids disappearing, and that’s going to get a lot harder.”

  “Harder than this?” Sarah reached out a hand and lightly touched the child’s long blond hair. “Her mother is gone. And I haven’t seen her father in two days.”

  Bailey’s mouth tightened. “You didn’t include that in the report.”

  “I wasn’t sure until today. But he’s gone. I think he was beginning to ask too many questions. He didn’t believe his wife would have just run away, not without their daughter.”

  “He was right about that.”

  Sarah had been expecting it, but the news was still an unwelcome shock. “She was found?”

  “A few miles downriver. And she’d been in the water awhile, probably since the night she disappeared. No way to determine cause of death.”

  Bailey didn’t have to explain that further.

  “Are the police going to come around asking questions?” Sarah asked.

  “They have to. Ellen Hodges was known to be a member of the church, and the last time she was seen it was in the company of other church members. Her parents know that, and they’re more than willing to point the police in this direction. So if the good Reverend Samuel can’t produce Ellen’s husband or her child, he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

  Sarah managed a hollow laugh, even as the sense of unease she felt grew stronger. “You’re assuming the cops who come here won’t be church members or paid-off friends of the church.”

  “Shit. Are you sure?”

  “From something I overheard, I’m convinced enough that I say it wouldn’t be a good idea to take any local law enforcement into our confidence. Not unless somebody on our side can read them very, very well.”

  “Good enough for me. But Bishop is not going to be happy about it.”

  “I doubt he’ll be surprised. We knew it was a possibility.”

  “Makes the job harder. Or at least a hell of a lot more tricky. Not that it wasn’t already, with the town being so isolated and the church so insulated.” Bailey shifted the child’s weight again. “I need to get the kid out of here.”

  “Wendy. Her name’s Wendy.”

  “Yes. I know. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of her. She has family who love her and will want her.”

  “She also has an ability she’s barely aware of.” Sarah reached out once more to gently touch the child’s hair, then stepped back. “Protect her. Protect her gift.”

  “We will. And you watch your back, hear? You’ve got a dandy shield of your own, but if it’s taking an effort to pretend you could belong here, Samuel or one of his so-called advisers could pick up on the fact that you’re hiding more than a bit of doubt about the good reverend and his real agenda.”

  “Believe me, I know.” Something cold was spreading through Sarah’s body, and she took two more steps back, deliberately removing herself from the other woman’s protective shield. “Tell Bishop and John that at least one of Samuel’s closest advisers is a strong psychic. I’ve felt it. Not sure which one; there’s nearly always a group of men around him.”

  “Maybe you were just picking up Samuel.”

  “No. With Samuel it’s just the way it’s always been, a . . .null field. As if he isn’t even there, at least psychically. No sens
e of personality, no aura, no energy signature at all.”

  “That’s more than a shield.”

  “I know. I’m just not sure what it is. I’ve never sensed anything like it before.”

  Bailey shook her head. “I was really hoping that had changed or you’d learned to read him somehow.”

  “I’ve tried, believe me, every chance I’ve had. But nothing. He’s literally shut inside himself.”

  “All the time?”

  “Whenever I’ve been close enough to try to pick up something. But I’m not part of the inner circle or one of his chosen women.”

  “No, we haven’t been able to get anyone that close.”

  “And I don’t know if we ever will. That inner circle is incredibly protective of him. And whoever the psychic is . . . he’s got one hell of a shield, a readable one, so it’s a given there’s something powerful generating it. But I’m not sure what he can do, what his ability is. It could be anything. Tell them to be careful. Whoever else they send in needs to be careful.”

  “Sarah—”

  “I’ll report when I can.” Sarah turned and hurried away, her slender form almost instantly swallowed up by the shadows of the forest.

  Bailey hesitated, but only for an instant, before swearing under her breath and turning to retrace her own steps. She moved swiftly, even carrying the child, and covered at least thirty yards before she heard, from somewhere behind her, a sound that stopped her in her tracks and yanked her around.

  The beginning of a scream, cut off with chilling abruptness, its echo bouncing around eerily in the otherwise silent woods.

  “Bailey, move.” For a big man, Galen himself moved with uncanny silence, but that wasn’t the trait she was interested in right now.

  “Sarah. Galen, you have to—”

  “I know. Get to the car. If I’m not there in five minutes, leave.” His weapon was in his hand, and he was already moving away, back toward the Compound.

  “But—”

  “Do it.”

  Bailey wasn’t a woman who accepted orders easily, but she obeyed that one without further question. Tightening her arms around the sleeping child and concentrating on intensifying the protective blanket of energy wrapping them both, she hurried through the woods toward the road and the car hidden there.

  Galen had long ago perfected the art of moving through any type of terrain without making a sound, but he was all too aware that at least some of those who might hunt him in this forest could listen with more than their ears. Even so, he didn’t allow the knowledge to slow him down, and he made good time.

  Unfortunately, not good enough.

  Then again, he acknowledged grimly, he had probably been too late at the first note of Sarah’s scream.

  She lay on her back in a small clearing, in a pool of moonlight so bright and stark it was like a spotlight. The agony contorting her features seemed an almost unreal Halloween mask of horror. Her wide eyes gazed directly up at him, terrified and accusing.

  At least that was the way Galen saw it. He wasn’t psychic in the accepted sense, but he could read people in his own way. Even dead people.

  Maybe especially dead people.

  He knelt beside her sprawled body, his free hand feeling for her carotid pulse even as he kept his weapon ready and visually scanned the woods all around them.

  He didn’t see or hear a thing.

  And Sarah was gone.

  Still kneeling beside her body, he frowned down at her. There wasn’t a mark on her that he could see, no visible cause of death. She had bundled the child well against the cold, but her own jeans and thin sweater had provided little protection, and the light color of her clothing allowed him to be fairly certain there was no blood to indicate any kind of wound.

  He slipped his hand underneath her shoulder, intending to turn her over and check her back for any wounds, but paused as he realized just how she was positioned. She had been returning to the Compound, and unless she had somehow gotten turned around and changed direction, it looked as though she had been knocked backward from an attack she had run into head-on.

  And yet the frozen ground around her, crystals of frost glittering in the moonlight, was very clearly undisturbed by any sort of struggle and unmarked by any footprints except for his own and Sarah’s. Their footprints—arriving at this point. And Sarah’s footprints continuing on. But not returning.

  It was as if she had been lifted off her feet yards farther along and thrown back to the center of the clearing with incredible force.

  Galen wondered suddenly if a medical examiner would find her bones so shattered they were virtually crushed, as Ellen Hodges’s bones had been.

  He hesitated a moment longer, weighing the pros and cons of taking her back with them. It wasn’t in his nature or training to leave a fallen comrade behind, but the incredibly high stakes in this situation forced him to reconsider. Someone had killed her, and that someone would expect to find her body here. If she didn’t remain where she was expected to be . . .

  “Shit,” he breathed almost without sound, the curse a small cloud of cold mist. “Sorry, kid. I—”

  It was his instinct to look someone in the eye when delivering a hard truth, and so he looked into Sarah Warren’s dead eyes when he began to tell her he would have to leave her body here to be recovered by her murderers.

  Her eyes were changing. As he watched, they slowly fogged over, the irises and pupils at first dimmed and finally completely obscured by white. And in the bright moonlight the angles of her face seemed sharper, the planes becoming hollows, as if more than her life had been—was being—sucked out of her.

  Galen had seen many dying and dead over the years, but he had never seen anything like this before. And for one of the very few times in his adult life, he felt suddenly vulnerable. Nakedly vulnerable.

  His gun couldn’t protect him here. Couldn’t even help him. Nothing could.

  He found himself withdrawing his hand from under her shoulder and was conscious of an almost overwhelming urge to leave, now, to get as far away from this place as he could, as fast as he could.

  But once again, he wasn’t quite fast enough.

  He was still rising, just beginning to turn, when he saw the three men only a few yards away, moving swiftly through the woods toward him with a silence that was uncanny.

  The one in front, a tall man with wide shoulders and a stone-cold expression, already had his weapon out and raised and offered neither warning nor any chance at all. The big silver gun bucked in his hand.

  Galen felt the bullet slam into his chest before he heard the muffled report, felt the frozen ground hard beneath him, and was dimly aware of his own weapon falling from nerveless fingers. He couldn’t seem to breathe without a choking sensation, and blood bubbled up into his mouth, sharp and coppery.

  Christ, what a cliché. I can’t think of something better?

  Apparently he could not. He had a mouth full of warm liquid metal, and he could literally feel his life ebbing from his body. Not sucked out as Sarah’s had been but just leaving him, the way his blood flowed from the gaping wound in his chest and soaked into the cold ground. For a few brief seconds he looked at the bright moon, then the light was blocked out as the three men stood over him.

  He focused with an effort on the taller one, the one whose stone-cold killer’s face he could not now make out. Just a silhouette with gleaming eyes, silent, watching him.

  “Son of a bitch,” Galen managed thickly. “You sorry son of a—”

  The big silver gun bucked again, hardly more than an almost apologetic sneeze of sound escaping the silencer, and a train slammed into Galen, and everything went black and silent.

  “What if he was a cop?”

  “What if?” Reese DeMarco knelt briefly to pick up the automatic from the ground beside the outstretched arm of the man he had shot, adding in the same unemotional tone as he rose, “Search him. See if he’s carrying I.D.”

  The man who had asked the question k
nelt down to gingerly but thoroughly search the body. “No I.D.,” he reported. “No harness or holster for the gun. Not even a damn label in his shirt. Shit, you really nailed him. Two dead-center in the chest. I would’ve expected body armor and gone for the head shot.”

  “I doubt he expected armed opposition. Probably just a P.I.hired by one of the families with no idea what he was getting into.” DeMarco thumbed the safety on the confiscated weapon and stuck it into his belt at the small of his back. “Amateurs.”

  The third man, who had stood silently scanning the woods, said, “I don’t see any sign of the kid. Think she ran off?”

  “I think she was carried off.” The words had barely left DeMarco’s lips when, faintly, they all heard the sound of a car’s engine revving and then fading within seconds into silence.

  “Amateurs,” DeMarco repeated.

  “And heartless, not to come back for their dead.” It was said with absolutely no sense of irony, and the man still kneeling beside the bodies looked down at them sorrowfully for a moment before lifting his gaze again to DeMarco. “I didn’t hear Father say—does he want these two brought back?”

  DeMarco shook his head. “Dump the bodies in the river, Brian. Fisk, help him. It’s nearly dawn; we need to get back.”

  They obeyed the clear order, holstering their weapons and bending to the task of lifting the large, heavy man from the frozen ground.

  “Over a shoulder would be easier,” Carl Fisk panted as they struggled to manage the dead weight. “Fireman’s carry.”

  “You can if you want to,” Brian Seymour told him. “Not me. I go back covered in this guy’s blood and my wife is gonna ask all kinds of questions.”

  “All right, all right. Just lift your share, will you? Shit, Brian—”

  DeMarco looked after the two men for a long moment until they disappeared into the forest and he could measure their progress only by the continuing complaints and fading grunts of effort. Finally he returned his weapon to the shoulder holster he wore and knelt beside the body of Sarah Warren.

  He didn’t have to check for a pulse but did it anyway, then gently closed her eyes so the frosty whiteness was no longer visible. Only then did he methodically search her to make certain she wasn’t carrying identification—or anything else that might cause problems.